Abstract
In Pakistan, wage trends have been characterized by the widening of wage differentials. The gap between wages of low-income and high-income groups has widened in recent years, due more to national socio-economic structural anomalies and failures than global factors. The country has a statutory minimum wage (MW) fixing system, but it does not function effectively mostly because MW setting is not carried out institutionally but is arbitrarily based on political expediency. Wage setting through collective bargaining is rare as trade unions have diminished in number, size and power due to neoliberal economic policies, repressive labour legislation and informalization. A disconnect between the labour movement and academia and the disinterest of economists in labour issues have all contributed to the absence of a meaningful debate on MWs.
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© 2015 Karamat Ali, Zeenat Hisam and Sohail Javed
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Ali, K., Hisam, Z., Javed, S. (2015). Pakistan. In: van Klaveren, M., Gregory, D., Schulten, T. (eds) Minimum Wages, Collective Bargaining and Economic Development in Asia and Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137512420_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137512420_6
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